Why are unsolved Apple Community threads closed?

After a certain amount of time a question may no longer be relevant. For example, a bug may have been corrected after a later OS release. There are unsolved questions on this forum that are 20 years old. I doubt the moderation team has the resources to constantly monitor all the possible scenarios where a question may no longer be relevant and if nobody has replied in a while then they just let to topic close. If somebody really wants to know the answer they can just ask the question again and include a link to an earlier question if they think it has relevant content.

Also note that:

• The OP is not required to even respond back if the issue was resolved. It is perfectly acceptable, although not helpful, for the OP to apply a recommended solution where their issue is resolved and not follow up.
• OS Updates changes many of the previous questions where they are no longer relevant.
• Many times a question posted by the OP has been hijacked by others with different information that may be unrelated making the entire post irrelevant and difficult to follow.
• The OP may have unsubscribed from the post they initiated, so they would not even receive a notification if another user responded to it.

For all those reasons, that is why it is recommended to create your own post where you will have fresh eyes on the issue with your exact device/OS information and you can always link to the previous post if your issue is similar.

jkr98116 wrote:

what's with "This thread has been closed by the system or the community team.

You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers."

Many times an unsolved issue is terminated this way. Most unhelpful.

Because that’s the way our hosts want it.

Here are some previous discussions of this topic for your perusal:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256127949

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256227865

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256141382

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256083614

Some threads can turn into honeypots with the same question asked and answered repeatedly sometimes for a year or more, other threads become targets for spam, and other threads can accrue replies for unrelated questions because both unrelated questions shared the same iPhone model, among other considerations.

There’s no right answer here, and arguably all designs are wrong.

If you still have the same issue as that in a closed thread, start a new thread and your issue will be seen again by participants here.